[Westheim]

Much of January was then spent trying to get something else for Alex Majano, who unfortunately had little trade value due to sagging results and that big bill to pay in 2039.

The Raccoons had their pitching together, with a rotation of Sparkes, Bedrosian, Bernie Chavez, Sabre, and Fidler. The pen had five fixed components in Campbell, Garavito, David Fernandez, Prieto, and Citriniti. That left two spots open – we could either stuff a natural reliever in there (Sims, Pena) or a sixth starter as long man (Alaniz, Ottinger). Jose Alaniz was the only left-hander in this group, and apart from that Garavito and Fernandez were the only southpaws on staff. The rotation was entirely right-handed.

Catching and outfield were of course done – no changes from last year, we were entirely confident with what we had there.

The real mess was the infield. After the big trade the Raccoons had a new starting first baseman in Danny Monge (third-string catcher, too, although he had not caught games regularly since ’35 and was also not very good at it, but it wasn’t like we’d take playing time away from Kilmer and Morales intentionally – he was an *option* and options are great to have). Cosmo at second and Berto at third were givens. Short was the trouble position. Unfortunately Majano and Elijah Williams were both right-handers. Unfortunatelier, Majano had posted an even lower OPS than Williams (by 20 points) in ’38. Williams was clearly superior defensively (and somebody’s gotta bat eighth), so why would we put Majano there?

Boy, are we full of it – putting a guy making almost $2M on the bench for pinch-running duties!

Joel Hernandez was the sixth infielder, backing up Berto. That left all the remaining younger guys (Caskey, Brito) on the outside looking in.

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January 21 – The Condors give $3.32M to 40-year-old lefty Bryce Neal (76-77, 3.74 ERA) for a 1-year contract.

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Tim Stalker joins the Rebels for $468k; Fernando Garcia gets $700k from the Wolves;